My mom does this and it drives me mad, because no matter how much I explain to her she still has that “well they must just be bad with money if they buy a smartphone but live on the streets” mindset. She still thinks a smartphone is a luxury item.
phones have now become more than a commodity into that of a basic need, as it is necessary to interact with the world now. It also is probably the only thing keeping a lot of depressed homeless people going. Its really weird that people think that somehow they won’t try buying a phone or computer.
You literally can’t get a job at the vast majority of places or even complete trivial errands if you don’t have some sort of personal computing device. The days of getting by only with the public library computer are gone. There are organizations that give homeless people phones and laptops for a reason.
In India, when we banned Chinese mobile apps, I was wondering why Chinese mobile phones were not banned too. The reason is that having a smartphone is important even for the poorest of people. And only Chinese smartphones are cheap enough for this class of people.
